When you read the title of the article, it almost sounds unreal. It certainly looks like something that you would find in a newspaper from 50 years ago, not in 2014. And yet, Wilcox County High School recently had it's first integrated school prom, well it's first school sponsored one anyway. "The last official school proms were held in Wilcox County decades ago, before schools were racially integrated." The first desegregated prom was actually last year and was "open to white, black, Latino and Asian students." The student faced a lot of backlash from their community because it brought negative attention, but this year the school has agreed to host prom and has finally gotten itself out of the 50s and closer to present day.
I have very mixed feeling about this. On the one hand, good on the students for recognizing that this "tradition" is dated and needs to be changed, but on the other hand, why the hell should they have even needed to change this tradition? This problem should have been fixed years ago. I also want to point out the fact that these students were harassed last year for doing this because the community "disliked the change -- or the crush of media attention it brought." They didn't want to fix this problem all these years because the media might find out?! Ugh. I'm happy that these students fought to change this, but it feels about two generations too late.
Link: http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/04/living/integrated-prom-wilcox-county-georgia/index.html?hpt=us_t5
Thats so strange! When studying it in class, we obviously know that it was in the somewhat recent past, but to think that something as horrible and racist as segregation still goes on today, it's eye opening.
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